Cook Korean! A Comic Book with Recipes

Ha, a professional cartoonist and amateur chef, gained online notoriety for her Tumblr project entitled “Banchan in 2 Pages,” a weekly comic with illustrated instructions for various Korean dishes. Ha now transitions to print with this collection of 65 drawn recipes, 50 of which are new for the book. Offerings range from traditional to contemporary, and include six types of kimchi, seafood dishes such as spicy octopus and pan-fried yellow croaker, and separate chapters for stews, porridges, noodles, and street food. Promoted as an “intersection of graphic novel and cookbook,” it is a work in need of a traffic light. The illustrations are colorful and charming, full of animated vegetables, a superhero can of Spam, and a winking squid. But her two-page compositions are highly nonlinear and extremely crowded, making the recipes appear more complicated than they actually are. Arrows and dotted lines are employed to give structure, but they further distract the eye. Meanwhile, numerous descriptions and instructions are presented in speech bubbles or crammed onto the page in tight paragraphs. It’s an adventure in risky chopping for those who like to read along as they prep. (July)